


Though you only stayed a moment, we all know that you're the one

by Hieiandshino



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, kind of, not as important as the coffee shop au, sad coffee shop au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 09:25:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3204188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hieiandshino/pseuds/Hieiandshino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Is it ridiculous to wait to see a person you only met once?” Charles finally asks, finally breaks.</i>
  <br/>
  <i>“Yes”, Raven says. “But that’s how every love story begins.”<i><br/><i>And that is how every love story ends too.</i></i></i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Though you only stayed a moment, we all know that you're the one

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crimsonwitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonwitch/gifts).



> The X-Men and Marvel (both all media types) don't belong to me.
> 
> Title comes from James Blunt's song "So long Jimmy".
> 
> Fanfic revised by the beautiful DuendeJunior. Yes, that person that I love to give fanfics for. Any mistakes are my own because I edited it later.
> 
> Finally I could edit the way I wanted. Thanks, AO3!

Charles Xavier is 20 years old and he should know better. He’s stressed and can’t stop thinking about all the things he has yet to do. He greets the customers and takes their orders on automatic, while his mind keeps going on and on about a thousand different things. It was a stupid idea to start working during midsemester — and even more stupid to start working _at all_. It’s not like he needs it. His family is indubitably rich, but he decided it would be great to his personal growth to have an actual job that does not involve his future profession. To be fair, Raven told him it would be suicide and yet he chose not to listen to her — he never does, in fact.

Now he has to study to four different tests next week, read two books, catch up with the readings of more than half of his classes and work full time during six days of the seven days of the week. Charles is pretty sure one of his professors gave him a look that said he would fail a class — he’s also pretty sure someone stole his notes from another class. Later, as he complained to Raven about the possible theft, Raven said later Charles was on his way to become a paranoid old woman, which is sexist and yet could be true, but he decided to ignore it too since he did not had the time to mentally analyze himself and figure it out if she is right or not.

That is why he knows it is true love when his next customer comes and, with a strong German accent, asks for an iced green tea latte. Yup, _that_. The order is so strange Charles has to look up and meet impossible blue eyes from a man that smirks at him in a condescending manner. “I’m sorry.” Charles says. “Could you repeat?”

The man’s smirk grows wider as he says it again his order. The words roll out of his tongue with that German accent and it goes direct to Charles groin and, possibly, his heart. The order still is weird, though.

Charles, of course, keeps it professional. He takes the order, puts the name on the cup ( _Erik, like some character from an old novel that Raven definitely would know about_ ) passes it along to Alex — who gives Charles the weirdest look _ever_ , as shocked by the order as Charles is — and tells the man how much his small craziness costs. The man gives him too much money and asks Charles to keep it and that makes everything better.

The man is good looking, Charles thinks as he takes the next order and the next and the next. Cute, tall, _old_. Maybe ten years older than Charles, but he finds himself not caring because the man is handsome and might be German. He is well kept and doesn’t seem to know the city very well, since Charles can hear him asking someone where he can find a good restaurant to eat something that is _not_ fast food. When the person obviously reminds the man that he is close to a university, the man deflates.

Charles remembers his name suddenly. _Erik_. _Erik_ something and Charles thinks of all the German last names he knows and realizes that none fit the man who is waiting for his order a few meters away from Charles. Maybe, he thinks absently, he’ll leave a document behind and Charles will be able to find out who the hell that man is or what is his last name ( _and if it fits the man in front of Charles or is just one of those last names that are a bit too ironic_ ). Or maybe he is a new professor that just got transferred from Germany and Charles will know about it on his next class. It is a good fantasy, Charles thinks, and he decides to store it for later.

Erik receives his order and smiles at Alex — Alex tells Charles later about how that smile made him feel sorry for the customer _and_ scared of him at the same time. He then leaves and Charles does his best to not follow the man with his eyes as he stops in front of the coffee shop and waits so he can cross the street. Charles fails, which is very surprising because he has always been better at self-restraint than most of his friends. Alex does not comment on that at that moment, but both of them know he will. In the end, Charles follows with his eyes the brown jacket Erik is wearing making his away across the university until he blinks, and then Erik who ordered iced green tea latte is just another person trying to learn or teach something.

.

Charles is not someone who falls in love easily. He is not someone who _wants_ to fall in love, but he thinks it is probably love what he’s feeling now, because he can’t get the man out of his mind. Erik had a strong presence, piercing blue eyes, beautiful face and amazing hair. He also had a delicious accent and a strange taste for tea. Charles likes that, though he doesn’t understand why.

He tells Raven what happened with the man and she is delighted. Raven is reading one of her books about acting for her next class and then stops when Charles describes Erik. “So Mr. Darcy”, she says with that teasing tone that got Hank wrapped on her fingers in a matter of minutes. Charles vaguely remembers the man from the film, but cannot understand the comparison. “I am not a heroine from one of your love stories”, he says and she puts down the book, looking vaguely outraged.

“Jane Austen isn’t a love story. It’s the love everyone should be achieving”, she says with seriousness, but then smiles in that way that says Raven is just messing up with him. Charles cannot understand how someone can fit so well in their degree as Raven. She was _born_ to be other people.

“You say that but you’ve read all her books”, Charles reminds her. She laughs and soon they start talking about other things. However, when they are ready to have some sleep, Raven looks into his eyes and asks: “Do you think he will return tomorrow?”

Charles shrugs, but the idea of seeing Erik again and again is better than the dreams he usually has when he sleeps.

.

This is what happens in coffee shop-related love stories: the customer and the employee fall in love. Be it two men, two women, a man and a woman, but they’ll always fall in love. The customer suddenly becomes a regular and develops a strange relationship with barista. They talk and they fall in love, until something happens and they get together.

Coffee shops are the place to fall in love, he thinks, and Charles wonders if this will happen to him the next day.

.

Charles has a problem. He usually thinks of something and decides it’s a wonderful idea. Then, he tries to make it come true. However, dreams and reality have a tendency to be discrepant and just because it _could_ be possible it doesn’t mean it will be. Charles ends up disappointed and wonders if everyone feels this way or if it is him who wants an impossible idea to become true.

He is one of the smartest students of his year, he gets the highest grades and the professors love him. Charles’s brain likes to think of every outcome before he gives up on a subject and that suits him well enough to be a doctor. Charles would never give up on a patient until he found out what was killing the person – like a Greg House, but nicer.

That suits him well enough to be a doctor, but not to be a common barista on a coffee shop. Charles realizes he did not think this thing of a “coffee shops are the place to fall in love” through – the same way it happened with the idea of getting a job even though he does not need it – when Erik does not come back the next day.

It’s a horrible feeling. Charles is shot down before he even got a chance. He is not the kind of person that knows he has no chance with the person he has fallen in love with on the moment he sees them. Charles is the person who develops a love story instead of sleeping and now sees everything he planned last night crumbling before his eyes _because he did not think that the other person inside the story had any choice_. Erik must come because this story is about Charles. However, Erik does not come because he has free will and also has no idea who Charles _is_.

Charles skips his classes and goes straight to his apartment. When he opens the door and looks at Raven, sitting on their couch and listening to her iPod as she writes something on her notebook, the look on his face makes her drop everything she is doing to reach him and hug him.

.

The next day, Erik does not come in. Or the next day. Or the next day.

Two weeks pass and Charles’s love story feels surprisingly pathetic and _sad_ for a coffee shop and maybe he should drop out of Medicine and try and become a depressive writer who’s addicted to some drug — morphine, because it was clichés that put him in this situation— and only writes about his failed fictional relationships that he wants to become reality.

In his original story of how Charles and Erik fall in love, it takes six to eight months for their first kiss. Charles likes the idea that someone would wait this long for him because he would not do this for anyone that was not Raven. He loves his sister unconditionally and would like to do this with someone like Erik — and that someone would do the same to him.

However, now that he figures it out Erik did not fall in love with him the way he fell in love with Erik — he thinks it is love, because no other emotion fits this obsession and makes it look mildly sane —, he delays their first kiss. Erik will enter the coffee shop after a month because he is here for business until he decides to throw his life in Germany away to be with Charles.

_Two weeks_ , he thinks. _And then I give up for good_.

.

But giving up means forgetting and Charles does not know if he wants to forget Erik and leave this fantasy behind.

.

“He won’t come in anymore”, Alex says one day and Charles, who is the one in charge of making the orders, startles. “The German guy you’re in love with.”

“I’m not _in_ _love_ with him”, Charles lies. “I’m just wondering.”

Alex takes the order from the only person in line and passes it to Charles, who starts preparing the drink. They don’t talk until she receives her order and sits on one of the free tables.

“You’re just wondering when he’ll come back so you’ll can pick up where you left”, Alex comments and Charles blushes. “Which is _nowhere_.”

“ _Shut_ _up_ ”, Charles snaps, before looking into Alex’s eyes. “How do you know all this, anyway?”

“Your sister told Hank and he told me.”

“Why would she do that? It was a secret!”, he says, a little flustered, but no, it wasn’t.

“Hank noticed you were… Different. She told him, he told me and also said to me to keep an eye on you.”

Charles rolls his eyes. “I’m _fine_ ”, he says and tries his best to not keep glancing at the door to see if Erik will enter. When he fails, he asks himself when he became this pathetic.

.

Erik comes to the university only once a year and one day they will meet again and Charles will be a doctor and Erik will be something Charles still haven’t decided and Erik will say “I remember you” and Charles will say “I never forgot you” and they will kiss and be in love and be together forever as they pick up from where they left.

.

A year passes since Erik ordered his iced green tea latte and Charles celebrates by sleeping around with three different guys. He isn’t angry with life, isn’t angry with Erik or angry with himself. Charles doesn’t want to find another obsessive love and he definitely doesn’t want a relationship right now. Charles feels nothing, almost reaching a stage of apathy to the world that is more than welcome, but that should have come _one year earlier_.

Charles sleeps with the first guy, then two weeks later with the second and three days later with the third. He is about to find the fourth guy when Raven hugs him and tells him to stop and that she is worried about him.

“Is it ridiculous to wait to see a person you only met once?” Charles finally asks, finally breaks. His voice is barely a whisper; his dreams are shattered around him, all over the campus and at the coffee shop and at his apartment and at his parents’ house and libraries and streets, because he inserted Erik and his fantasies in every class, every avenue, every minute of his life and didn’t think of deleting all this data until it was too late.

Raven thinks about it, still hugging him as if afraid that, if she lets him go, he will leave the apartment and only come back the next day with love bites and a horrible hangover. “Yes”, she says. “But that’s how every love story begins.”

.

And that is how every love story ends too.

.

This is what Charles Xavier will never know: Erik’s last name is Lehnsherr and he’s in town because of a new experimental treatment for a rare form of cancer in Charles’s university, to be realized on the teaching hospital of the city. Not because he is a professor, but because his daughter Anya was one of the few selected to be part of the experiment — also her only hope.

Years later, he will know and study the Anya Lehnsherr case and think that Lehnsherr would be a good last name for Erik. However, this man Lehnsherr had a daughter and thus was probably married while that Erik from the coffee shop didn’t have a wedding band. So Charles will store that for later and will forget about the Anya baby and not even think about the hurt the family must have felt when their first baby died at the beginning of the treatment — the first of few.

He will never know that Erik almost divorced his wife, but then were blessed with twins and that later they would have another baby girl, as strong as her oldest brothers. Charles will also never know how Erik held his children as if they would break but, in the future, after his wife had died, would become the one who would hurt his two daughters and a son ( _more his son than his daughters_ ) the most.

.

It will take years for Charles to understand and learn that sometimes monsters can be beautiful too, though he will never learn this from Erik. Not like his children did and passed it over to every relationship they ever had in the future.

.

In the end, Charles concludes it must have been true love indeed. Attraction, crush, anything that sounds ephemeral wouldn’t hurt this much, wouldn’t have been this disappointing.

**Author's Note:**

> The main idea could fit in a drabble, but I wanted to develop it a little more and then I lost the control over the fanfic. I have no idea if Charles is IC since I never cared for him at all and never expected to write with him. But Vic totally prompted me by accident while I was commenting on another idea for a sad coffee shop au and she loves this ship, so.
> 
> For a first trial at writing angst inside a coffee shop au, I am actually surprised to see it worked so well. Kind of. I am proud of this fanfic and I love many sentences and scenes, but I think it could've gone better. The next one will get better.
> 
> PS: Yes, I kept reminding myself that I just couldn't put Erik in the end of the story and get them together because it would ruin the prompt, but _I wanted to do it so badly_.


End file.
